Visions of the Blind

We are teaching in an era of unique opportunity and change. Even as recently as nine years ago when I started my TVI career, whenever I needed information about how to teach or where my resources may be located, I was at a loss. I either had to reach out to the state Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired and hope they knew the answer—which they often times did—or I had to create a solution to roadblocks on my own. Now, however, we are lucky to be working during the height of massive online collaboration projects, which means I think we are poised to start addressing some significant areas of need in our field. The area of need I am most passionate about right now is training and retention of qualified, able paraprofessionals.           In my second year of teaching, I needed to train my first paraprofessional to work with a first-grade braille reader. Using Google, I found a variety of resources to support the need of havi...

Hello! This month we are tackling a hard topic to discuss but one that you hear about almost daily in our schools: bullying. Now some of you may have rolled your eyes already because this IS something you have heard over and over again. BUT…did you know that students with disabilities are statistically more likely to be bullied than their average peers? If your student has a disability and is in a mainstream class, the percentage is even higher! That is scary! Why do you think that is? Some studies show that students who have obvious differences (speech impediments, different classroom materials such as braille or large print, a long cane, poor social skills) are more likely to be picked on because bullies see them as ‘easy targets’. Of course, there are some that say we are hyper focused on bullying, and that has resulted in every negative behavior being labeled as a bullying type action. Look, I get it, kids will be kids every now and then. Sometimes you’ve got to tell ...